[Pnews] Rasmea Defense Rasmea Odeh Defense Team Files Motion to Dismiss Indictment

[Prisoner News]

January 31^st

*Media Contact:* Hatem Abudayyeh, Rasmea Defense Committee spokesperson

*Rasmea Odeh Defense Team Files Motion to Dismiss Indictment* 
<http://justice4rasmea.org/news/2017/01/31/defense-team-files-motion-to-dismiss-indictment/>

/Prosecutors “Vindictive” After Losing on Appeal/

Today, the lawyers defending Palestinian American activist Rasmea Odeh 
moved to dismiss the new indictment that was brought against her in 
December 2016.  The motion and supporting brief 
<http://justice4rasmea.org/assets/img/MDism-I-2-and-Brief-in-Support-of-Motion-to-Dismiss.pdf> 
argue that the government’s “superseding indictment has substantially 
broadened the scope of the trial and the evidence that will be relevant 
and at issue.”

It also states that the new indictment, filed well beyond the statute of 
limitations in immigration law, is so different from the original 2013 
indictment that it cannot be accepted by the court. The statute of 
limitations for the alleged 2004 offense is 10 years. This new 
indictment tries to bring fundamentally different charges against Rasmea.

Finally, Rasmea’s defense exposes the U.S. Attorney’s filing of the 
superseding indictment as a retaliatory and vindictive act. The 
conviction that the prosecutors won in court in 2014 was overturned in 
2016 because the court violated Rasmea’s right to a full defense. She 
was not allowed to present expert testimony that she suffered from 
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of the torture she suffered 
at the hands of her Israeli captors in Palestine in 1969. Now the 
desperate prosecution is trying to bring terrorism charges against her. 
This is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to prejudice the jury 
by using buzz words such as “terrorism” to paint an unfavorable view of 
Rasmea.

When she was first falsely charged with a crime by the Israelis in 1969, 
Rasmea had been arrested along with close to 500 others in Jerusalem. 
The occupation forces of the Israeli military singled out Rasmea to 
force her into a confession, through the use of physical, psychological, 
and sexual torture. It is well known that Israeli documents from that 
unlawful conviction were the ones used by the U.S. Attorney’s office in 
Detroit to bring charges against her in 2013. Rasmea’s attorneys had 
previously challenged the judge’s allowance of these documents into 
evidence, since they were procured by documented torture in another country.

During her first trial, Judge Gershwin Drain repeatedly stated that he 
would not allow the retrying of Rasmea for the allegations against her 
from 45 years earlier. The motion filed today states, “Now that this 
Court has properly ruled that the PTSD testimony is admissible, the 
government wants to convert this trial into a political one about 
terrorism, and the defendant’s acts and affiliations almost fifty years 
after the fact.”

“We believe that we have a strong case,” said Bassem Kawar of the Rasmea 
Defense Committee. “It is clear that the prosecutors are desperately 
trying to levy ridiculous charges at Rasmea, in hopes that they can 
confuse the jury and distract them from the evidence of torture and PTSD 
that will be presented at the new trial.”

-- 
www.justice4rasmea.org

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/ppnews_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20170201/bdee664c/attachment.htm>